Chris, I think we can make a case that throughout history these types of innovations that have the potential for disrupting the existing order are not unusual. Bronze age, iron age, industrial age, discovery of knowledge about herbal/plant usages (both in healing and killing), communication speeds, gunpowder, bow & arrow over sling or just spear/club, navigation over semi-blind wondering.… Even opening up new trade routes, or accepting the presence of strangers, introduces such potentials so some have always fought against that. In general there has always been the fear of innovation and of the unknown that such things bring.
I didn’t really elaborate on the big jumps (thinking here of KatjaGrace’s discontinuity post). I see that as connecting here if we think about how people behave with change. I think people do a pretty good job of taking change in stride when it fits with the existing trend—in other words it’s near trend variations and not discontinuity change. When we’re seeing something that one might characterize as compressing say 50, 100, 500 years of trend progress into a few years people don’t know how to wrap their heads around what that will mean. Fear of the unknown.
So in history, just what types of innovations (probably by some few or even a single promoter) have been those types of jumps in technological progress and did they really produce what we’re saying is the risk now?
I think the answer has to be no, we really have not seen really bad outcomes for humans in general.
So perhaps a related question would be why has that not been the case. Here perhaps we can make the case that it comes back to the the Unilateralist Curse but in a slightly different form. It is where those risks become clear and present that the unilateralist is constrained by society. So rather then wanting to apply the thinking at the start of the innovation the argument applies to the post-innovative state perhaps.
Chris, I think we can make a case that throughout history these types of innovations that have the potential for disrupting the existing order are not unusual. Bronze age, iron age, industrial age, discovery of knowledge about herbal/plant usages (both in healing and killing), communication speeds, gunpowder, bow & arrow over sling or just spear/club, navigation over semi-blind wondering.… Even opening up new trade routes, or accepting the presence of strangers, introduces such potentials so some have always fought against that. In general there has always been the fear of innovation and of the unknown that such things bring.
I didn’t really elaborate on the big jumps (thinking here of KatjaGrace’s discontinuity post). I see that as connecting here if we think about how people behave with change. I think people do a pretty good job of taking change in stride when it fits with the existing trend—in other words it’s near trend variations and not discontinuity change. When we’re seeing something that one might characterize as compressing say 50, 100, 500 years of trend progress into a few years people don’t know how to wrap their heads around what that will mean. Fear of the unknown.
So in history, just what types of innovations (probably by some few or even a single promoter) have been those types of jumps in technological progress and did they really produce what we’re saying is the risk now?
I think the answer has to be no, we really have not seen really bad outcomes for humans in general.
So perhaps a related question would be why has that not been the case. Here perhaps we can make the case that it comes back to the the Unilateralist Curse but in a slightly different form. It is where those risks become clear and present that the unilateralist is constrained by society. So rather then wanting to apply the thinking at the start of the innovation the argument applies to the post-innovative state perhaps.